February 1, 2017

Flash Fiction by Jennifer Criss: "The Chocolates"

Jennifer Criss graduated from Ball State University with a minor in Creative Writing. Jennifer writes mostly short stories but has discovered a love for writing poetry.  Her poetry has been published in Poebita Magazine, Whispers, The Poet Community, NY Literary Magazine and Indiana Voice Journal. Her work also appears in several print anthologies. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2016. She now works at Ball State, is a busy mother of two girls and the art editor at Indiana Voice Journal. 




The Chocolates

“The nut ones are mine!” She yelled and smacked my hand away from the red velvet box.
“OK, fine. Which ones are you willing to part with?”
“Let’s see”  She clicked her tongue and scanned the map intently. “This one!”  She waved a round dark chocolate in front of my nose.
“What is it?” I was doubtful.
“I’m not going to tell you, just eat it.” She grinned mischievously and shoved the whole piece in my mouth.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake! Lemon!”   I was spitting it out as quickly as possible. I don’t know why I ever trusted her. I took a big swig of my coffee to get the taste out of my mouth. “No one likes lemon!”
“It’s lemon or nothing.” Sarah said snootily and blinked quickly as if this were a reasonable offer.
    She was such a selfish bitch.  I’ve no idea why we were even together.  Handing someone the lemon cream out of the assorted chocolates was the equivalent of giving someone the middle finger. You don’t give your loved ones or even friends the lemon cream!  If you cared at all, you shared the nut-filled or the chocolate truffles. Perhaps the coconut.  I understood coveting the caramels for yourself and maybe the maples.  I wouldn’t dream of being so selfish as to take one of those. But- only enemies got the lemon cream.  What the hell did I do?!
It was there and then that I knew.  We were over.   Truly Finished. If I thought about it there’d been other signs- I’d just refused to see them, but this… this was the last straw.  The proverbial nail in the coffin.


Wait, who was giving her Valentines chocolates, anyway?!
© Jennifer Criss



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